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Terminal Boredom: Stories (Verso) by Izumi Suzuki

Izumi Suzuki published her final story 35 years ago, but this introductory selection of her writing could have been written in the nuclear-paranoia 80s, the cyberpunk 90s, or yesterday. An iconic figure in Japanese science fiction, Suzuki’s darkly irreverent writing has seen her compared to the genre’s giants – like Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood – but her stories also bring to mind Bret Easton Ellis’s affectless ennui, or the glossily grim cautionary tales of the popular TV show Black Mirror.

Suzuki’s settings range from the intimate – bars, cafés, arcades, nightclubs – to the desolate: ruined cities and worlds on the edge of the abyss. Her protagonists negotiate these spaces with a cool detachment. Their days are parcelled into dissolute drinking, shift-work or therapy sessions while in the background, sinister government initiatives abound, from gender segregation to “voluntary” euthanasia. The futuristic details here – replicating technology, tentacled waiting-staff, elections via celebrity voting proxies – seem less significant than the exploration of mundanely earthbound concerns like addiction, flirtation, heartbreak and guilt, which follow the characters through space and time. In “Forgotten”, lifestyle differences and political outlooks diverge between planets and alien races, not between countries and classes. But imperialism and colonisation have also upsized, their sights set now on not just nations but whole worlds.

Terminal Boredom’s style is stark and often strikingly snappy (“I have no remorse about having no remorse” is a typical line) but subdued, making its sporadic dashes of drama all the more devastating. The collection’s several translators manage to capture Suzuki’s hardboiled, laconic cadences of conversation and communication. Invented slang is mixed with retro transatlanticisms: vibe, sucker, phoney, killing my buzz, off your rocker. Elsewhere, there are lines of striking familiarity – “But that’s the way we’d talk: duelling monologues, each of us in a bubble all her own” – where a particular kind of companionable alienation has resonance in our current age of locked-down isolation and living through social media.

In keeping with their mostly youthful protagonists and metropolitan settings, pop culture forms a vital part of these stories. In some, real-world songs and films act as a supporting structure, their familiarity offering an emotional anchor and a line of mutual connection as time warps and memories merge. Emotional confusion is reinforced by a quote out of place or the sudden chronological derangement of a playlist. In the title story, film and TV provoke emotional responses more comfortably than the drama of real life does – up to and including murder. In “That Old Seaside Club”, nostalgia induces emotional clarity, honesty and connection, but only because the characters are reliving their regret-filled lives of emotional withdrawal and passivity, until they learn to let go and accept.

A recurring theme here is the retention of past culture in disjointed pieces, like fragments of a dream. This is most explicit in “Night Picnic”, where learned behaviours, including rebellion and heartbreak, are jarringly performed rather than felt. The characters learn from jumbled cultural representations of “earthling” life and ancestor-worship, carrying out pointless rituals and duties for no other reason than that it makes – or keeps – them human.

Elsewhere, there is intriguing speculation on gender roles and dynamics in futures marked by abundance or frugality, overpopulation, sexual apathy and mutual suspicion. For Suzuki’s mostly female protagonists, men appear as subjects of mystery, curiosity and temptation – absent or background figures even when not overtly segregated. There is a focus on the significance of familial relationships – mothers, grandmothers, sisters – and on friendship, as much as, if not more than, on romantic prospects. We hear of “virgin births” of daughters with no need for a man’s involvement. In the absence of men, we see women take on both their duties and their looks and behaviour. We see characters defy the ageing process and the passage of time, and slip in and out of gender roles just as easily. The social classifications of nerd, hipster, addict and fashion victim are more enduring here than contemporary definitions of gender, race or class.

Futuristic fiction, paradoxically, can feel both retro and solidly rooted in the here and now. The absurdity and futility of going through the motions – “Why do I have to keep on living that life?” “Well, I’m not sure why” – is a thematic refrain throughout this collection. Terminal Boredom is an uneasy, dizzying descent through worlds that blend past, present and future, but such well-written anatomies of anxiety and dissatisfaction are both timeless and of obvious relevance today.

This article is from the New Humanist autumn 2021 edition. Subscribe today.